While skateboards have their own merits, fixed trucks and hard pavement don't exactly mimic the free-flowing, natural experience that surfers and snowboarders enjoy. Skateboard designers have tried to fix this shortcoming with all kinds of tricks. SurfSkate uses rotating trucks to attempt to fix skating's shortcomings.

When sites like Wikipedia and Reddit banded together for a major blackout January 18th, the impact was felt all the way to Washington D.C. The blackout had lawmakers running from the controversial anti-piracy legislation, SOPA and PIPA, which critics said threatened freedom of speech online.

Ever since University of Manchester scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov first isolated flakes of graphene in 2004 using that most high-tech pieces of equipment - adhesive tape - the one-atom sheet of carbon has continued to astound researchers with its remarkable properties. Now Professor Sir Andre Geim, (he's now not only a Nobel Prize winner but also a Knight Bachelor), has led a team that has added superpermeability with respect to water to graphene's ever lengthening list of extraordinary characteristics.

Graphene has already proven to be the thinnest known material in the universe, strongest material ever measured, the best-known conductor of heat and electricity, and the stiffest known material, while also the most ductile. But it seems the two-dimensional lattice of carbon atoms just can't stop showing off.

Production of the EUR4000 fold-up pedal-electric Voltitude set to begin

By Mike Hanlon

The Voltitude fold-up electric scooter has an ingenious EasyFold system. Once folded, a special button on the handlebar enables you to "walk" it alongside you indoors, so you never raise a sweat in reaching a power outlet, which will fully replenish the battery inside four hours. The 25 kph (15.5 mph) electric assist Voltitude begins volume production in July with an on-line price expected in the vicinity of EUR4000.

We uncovered lots of fantastic technology-driven innovations at NAMM recently, but as we saw with PocketStrings, not all good ideas are built around transistors. Chord Dice is another example. This clever songwriting and teaching tool dispenses with chord charts and books and hangs musical theory on the roll of the dice.

Part of learning to write a song is figuring out which chords sound good together. While experienced musos may be able to reel off all the chords in a particular key, beginners may find themselves constantly referring to charts in order to hit upon the right combination. The idea of Chord Dice is to distill this information onto the face of a die so that it's easy to learn the chords in a particular key. Even if you are not a beginner, there may be some inspiration to be had from rolling the dice.

DAR Training

We can't talk about advanced resources without developing proper training strategies. That's why DAR is developing an intense formation plan that starts with informal workshops but that will also include other types of courses. In January 2012 we will announce our yearly workshops program.

It will be organized in four different main themes distributed along each month four weeks. The idea is to turn a theme into a course and also better evaluate the outcomes.

Also DAR wants to assume all the formation plans as a solid and flexible complement do traditional design education.

This is one of the most important areas of dissemination of all the design resources DAR identifies since the association is completely independent from any political or technocratic rules.

domingo, 29 de janeiro de 2012

A primer on 3D printing 2012 may be the year of 3D printing: Lisa Harouni on TED
We may be preaching to the converted, but for those who still aren’t convinced (or maybe even aren’t aware) of just how exciting 3D printing is, this recent TED talk gives a neat overview.

Ultraviolet Business Card Flashlight

If you've seen some of my other business cards, I like the idea of giving away cards that are useful in some way. Most of my others have been more proof-of-concept, but this one is not only fun but easy to make, inexpensive and has a real wow factor.

It's a simple ultraviolet torch, but the basic design can easily be made as a normal (white) flashlight instead, and the components only cost a couple of dollars.

Introducing DoubleCAD™ XT

It's an AutoCAD LT work-alike. But free.

DoubleCAD™ XT is a great companion with AutoCAD® – and if you are a Google™ SketchUp™ user wanting to go from concept-to-construction drawings – or have an older copy of AutoCAD LT® that can't read the latest AutoCAD® files – DoubleCAD™ XT is an invaluable companion to SketchUp™ and AutoCAD LT®, too.

Several months ago I awoke one morning with an idea for a project. I had gone to bed thinking about a presentation I am going to make to a group of middle and high school technology teachers in a couple of months. I wanted to come up with a couple of simple and inexpensive projects they could use to teach their students some aspect of technology and hopefully inspire their creativity. During the night I dreamed of making machines out of paperclips and this project was born.

After 15 months of development, privately-owned Swiss company Novatiq is set to enter the robotics market with its first offering, SCORP. Designed for scouting and surveillance applications, SCORP is a Micro Unmanned Ground Vehicle (MUGV) that joins the growing ranks of throwable robots. As such, it is small, rugged and lightweight enough to be carried in a backpack and thrown into buildings or over rough terrain.

MEDUSA4 SMD™ is a very simple to use – yet extremely powerful – sheet metal design system, fully integrated within the MEDUSA4 design automation solution. Used by customers all over the world, from specialist truck manufacturers to architectural designers, SMD gives users maximum flexibility in the design of sheet metal parts.

The new Mindsets mini datalogger will be an indispensable tool for all manner of investigations and experiments. These first two versions of the datalogger record temperature or light level. The datalogger is in the form of a USB stick, so no cables are required to retrieve data or configure the device.

Ultimately, our goal is to create a highly visible community hub that will imbue open concepts into the formulation stages of new hardware and software projects, and help existing projects transition to open modes of development and operation

OpenVSP is a parametric aircraft geometry tool. OpenVSP allows the user to create a 3D model of an aircraft defined by common engineering parameters. This model can be processed into formats suitable for engineering analysis.

sexta-feira, 20 de janeiro de 2012

About Us

We believe that it is currently too difficult for designers, artists, and inventors to source materials. To solve this problem, we are building an online store that will streamline the process of innovation and inspire everyone—regardless of profession—to explore what’s possible.

This is a brand new entry level desktop laser engraver and cutter designed for hobbyists. The manufacturer, Full Spectrum Laser, has designed this machine as inexpensively as possible to make laser cutting a possibility to a larger audience that can’t afford an industry standard machine.

With this laser you can engrave from any application that can print to a standard printer including CorelDraw, Adobe Illustrator, Autocad, Inkscape and even MS Word and MS Paint. This is made possible because the machine uses Direct Print Drivers with the manufacturers RetinaEngrave USB Controller.

For cutting wood and acrylic the machine has a honeycomb table and exhaust fan. This fourth generation model uses a CO2 laser and a visible red laser pointer.

Barton Dring (bdring) of Buildlog.Net fame recently designed a 3D printer based on the multifunctional MakerSlide beams. MakerSlide, another of bdring’s projects, was designed to provide a standardized linear bearing for CNC digital fabrication equipment. It launched on KickStarter last year with 5x the requested funding.

This new design takes advantage of the simplicity and scalability of MakerSlide. The result is a 3D printer that is easy to fabricate, easy to assemble, easily scalable for a larger build area, and is extremely stable. Oh, and the wires are hidden inside the hollow space in the MakerSlide. Overall, it looks like a promising project.

We developed the 3D Printing Cloud Engine as a tailored-made solution. It means that we really adapt to the specific needs of your online store or website to provide you with the best customization solution.

quinta-feira, 19 de janeiro de 2012

To start with I must appreciate acknowledge and thank ‘Christian Zeitnitz’ for the fantastic Sound-card Oscilloscope & signal generator software available at his website on which this Instructable is based.

While working with the PC sound-card oscilloscope and signal generator I found the following limitations:

1. A low Input Impedance of the order 10 Kilo Ohms

2. Input voltage range limited to 2.8 V p-p

3. AC coupling of the I/O signals

4. Output voltage limited to 2V p-p

5. Sampling rate limited to 44kbps

Not much can be done about the sampling rate as it is a limitation of the sound card but the scope interface presented here attempts to improve the other factors.

Most significant is the addition of circuitry to estimate the positive and negative peak DC values of the signal and use this to offset the waveforms providing a realistic DC-coupled scope display.

Mini 2-wheel robot with IR sensor weight 14gr and ATTiny13 Soic

Hi From France !
My name is Mic
Sorry for my English (:
My purpose a Very Small Bot
A little easier to build for Robot can we have patience and a good magnifyingglasses,Its name: Roule_RobotHis nikename: RRCurb Weight: 14grDimensions: 39 x 22 mm

Steampunk Floating Arm Desk Lamp

Like many of my projects this began with the chance finding of a lovely old brass bowl in a thrift shop. I paid a dollar for it and walked out thinking "I love the patina - it would make a great lamp..." and when I got home tossed it into the box of brass bits and pieces collected over the years from my frequent visits to the recycling plants, the junkyard and the thrift shops I frequent. I forgot about the bowl for nearly a year and then had a hankering to make a floating arm desk lamp in the Steampunk genre and re-discovered the bowl. This provided the impetus and I went looking through my boxes for other bits and pieces which could be re-purposed to provide key elements of the construction. Many of my projects start this way and in a sense, this is what makes them difficult to present as a how-to-do-it instructable. So much of this depends on what bits and pieces you may have to hand or can find, that even planning is no more than a vaguely realized "Concept Drawing". The actual details will vary depending on what components one can find, or, in hitting a problem, how one chooses to solve the problem.

For those of you making or interested in making mechanical projects, there is plenty of helpful content available on the net. There has recently been some fantastic examples of working 3D printed mechanical components including Syvwch’s clock – that I covered a few weeks ago. Component manufacturer’s are starting to upload their cad libraries. I looked into a few mechanical precision component manufacturers this week

A bio-feedback armband called BodyWave is the first of its kind to measure brainwave activity through the body, not the scalp. Instead of an EEG headset recording a user's concentration level, the Bodywave reads brainwaves at the arm by measuring the electric current given off by neurons firing in the brain. Bundled with an interactive software package called Play Attention, it reportedly enables interactive feedback and training towards peak mental performance. Apart from the obvious potential in sport, its ability to train attention and teach stress-control in mobile situations (much less obtrusively than wearing a headset) opens up wider potential. It has already found applications in education, industry and the military as well as in improving the lives of people with disabilities like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Increasing internet usage gives more and more power to the people of India and China

Shannon Buckley

Due to expense, there was controversy in New Zealand mid last year when an Auckland school required the purchase of some sort of digital tablet such as an iPad by every new student. However, India may have developed new technology which overcomes the problem of expense and allows hundreds of millions of Indians in remote rural areas to connect to the internet. It may also soon make Indians the biggest single internet user population in the world.

The new device is similar in function to the Apple iPad – but the major difference is that it can be made and sold for under £35. Professor Prem Kalra, who is a team leader at the Rajasthan Indian Institute of Technology, has commented:

"We expect that within five or 10 years everyone will have one – and every year there will be greater capacity. There will be children learning, farmers checking on irrigation or crop prices, pregnant women getting medical assistance, all through the Aakash [the name of the new device]. It is empowerment on a global scale,”

As someone who spends a good deal of time taking photographs of new consumer technology, only to subsequently enjoy hours of tedium touching up my snaps in image manipulation software, I have to admit to being pretty excited by the new 3D PhotoBench 260 from Ortery Technologies. Shown at CES 2012 this week, the desktop photography studio is claimed to be the first system in the world to take product shots or create 360 degree Flash/HTML 5 animations with a pure white background.

Intuitive content creation, capture and customization Apps make it simple and fun to personalize creations and Cubify™ them at home on our Cube™3D printer or have them Cubified using our online printing service.

Market your own 3D creations or create new Apps for Cubify™ and earn money while inspiring others to Cubify™ their creations.
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• If you load a STL 3D model format, our staff reviews your model and works with you to get to a “3D Printable” state. Once that certification is achieved, your model can be submitted by buyers to be 3D Printed. You then benefit from an additional 10% royalty stream every time the model is submitted to our 3D Printing Service.